


Klance Week 2017

by saiikavon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Universe, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 21:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12241347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiikavon/pseuds/saiikavon
Summary: A series of oneshots for Klance Week 2017, each based on a prompt.





	1. Free Will/Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Klance Week was a while ago, but I figured it was time I posted these pieces up here, where they'd be easier to see.

The lines between free will and fate have blurred lately.

The universe kept bringing them together, over and over again, until Lance could no longer tell what was his choice and what he’d been destined for. Keith brought him to Blue, or she pulled them both, putting them side by side before they even knew what they were. Before Lance looked into stormcloud eyes and thought, _This is it. This is my universe._

He wonders. It’s hard to see the patterns, and he can’t help but want answers. He wants something to thank for this happiness, for the fingers laced through his and the lips warm upon his skin. His home away from home, nestled close every night. If fate brought them here, then they were blind to it for too long.

But perhaps that’s it. Fate only brought them so far. The choice–to protect, to fight, to love–was their own.


	2. Sacrifice

Keith was waiting alone, at his own insistence, for Lance to come out of the healing pod. He paced a soldier’s pace back and forth, eyes trained forward but focused inward.

He was hurt. He was livid.

When Lance stumbled out at last, Keith propped him up gently, sat him down, asked if he was fully healed. He waited for Lance to shake the grogginess from his system, rolled his eyes at the insufferable grin and cheesy pick-up line Lance threw forward. Then he let the anger take him.

“What the _hell_ did you think you were doing out there? You nearly got yourself killed!”

Lance dropped his grin, and stood to retrieve his clothes. “Hey, I’m still here, aren’t I? Besides, the mission was a success. Wins all around. Don’t worry so much.”

Keith ground his teeth. “The mission would have gone even better had you _listened_ to me and not thrown yourself in front of a _bomb_!”

“Or you could have gotten blown up instead,” Lance countered, his tone losing some of its playful edge. “Shouldn’t you be saying, ‘oh, Lance, my hero!’ instead of yelling at me?”

“Is that what this is, Lance? Being the hero?” Lance flinched but didn’t answer, and Keith took it as confirmation. “Unbelievable. I thought you were better than that! You can’t go into missions acting like a bigshot, this is serious!”

He didn’t expect Lance to turn on him, then, gaze flickering with anger, eyes almost shining with…tears?

“Great, you guys can take it seriously and just let me go on being the team screw-up, all right? May as well let me keep getting blown up while you guys do all the real work!” He threw his hands up in the air and hastily tugged his jacket on over the pod suit, arms stiff and hands trembling. Keith’s heart dropped into his stomach.

“Wait…what? What are you talking about? Who says you’re the team screw-up?”

“No, I mean…I’m not…forget it.” Lance shrugged, keeping his head low. “I’m hungry, so let’s just get some food goo and forget I–”

“No, wait.” Keith walked over, placed a hand on Lance’s shoulder. Everything in the atmosphere had softened, grown quieter. “Lance.”

It was only his name, spoken quietly but determinedly, a touch of hurt making Keith’s voice crack. Just his name, but it made Lance’s shoulders slump, and turned to sit back down with a defeated sigh.

“I’ve just…been falling behind,” he said. “Everyone’s stepped up since Shiro disappeared. You’ve been a great leader. Pidge and Hunk have made so many modifications I’ve lost count…Allura’s flying a lion, now. Even Coran’s upped his food and resource game.” He laughed helplessly. “I can barely keep up. What else can I do?”

Silence fell between them, and Keith felt himself crumble next to Lance. Some leader he’d turned out to be, that he couldn’t see someone on his team falling apart right in front of him. Worse, he’d almost lost the person he loved.

“Well,” he began, after a long moment, “you’re the best shot of anyone on the team. You’re a great tactician and a peacekeeper. You keep everyone safe, even when you’re not jumping in front of bombs. And you inspire people.”

Lance snorted. “Yeah, sure. I’m a real role model.”

Keith stared at him a moment. “Remember Commander Teyrin?”

Lance frowned, brow pinched in confusion. “Yeah, he was…the guy who helped us drive off Lotor’s troops back on Verdin.”

“He only did that because you convinced him to turn around.” Keith offered a small smile. “He told me you reminded him of his grandfather, the way you stood up to him and all his troops and told them to do what was right.”

Keith watched as Lance fell into silence again, eyes wide with wonder and disbelief. It was almost visible, the scene playing again in his mind, the reminder of what he’d done. Keith took the opportunity to scoot a little closer, and he gave Lance a gentle nudge.

“You’re not here just to be a human sacrifice. Don’t ever think that’s all you’re worth.”

Lance turned to him with a weak smile. “Thanks, mullet.”

“I mean it. If you do that again I will strangle you the minute you come out of that pod.”

Lance laughed. “Okay, okay! No more unnecessary, albeit dashing, rescues. I’ll just focus on being handsome and inspiring.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “You do that.”

Lance leaned in, grinning again, pressing his lips to Keith’s cheek. “You know you love me,” he murmured. Keith hummed in response, letting Lance rest against his shoulder.

They really were a good team.


	3. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Depictions of blood and violence in this chapter. Probably tamer than some, but just to be safe.

He made them match, scar for scar, pain for pain, so that when one finished screaming in agony, he got to look forward to the other experiencing the same.

Lance was first, his smart mouth earning him the first mark, a line across his cheek, almost too deep. Keith fought his shackles, demanded that Lance be let go. Lance got a second mark across the other cheek before it was Keith’s turn.

Lance’s eyes went wide with horror as he watched their captor repeat the marks perfectly across Keith’s face. It was the moment they both knew what they were in for. It made the next marks–deep slices into Keith’s shoulders–all the more painful. Keith watched Lance with a trembling gaze, knowing that these wounds, brimming with red, would appear soon on his lover.

Lotor found it all very poetic. Especially as the marks got worse and worse. As the two tried and failed to distract him, hoping to reduce the marks on either side. They made quite a pretty pair, when he was finished. A fact he never failed to remind them of, each time he saw them since.

The scars lingered. They saw them, mirrors of each other, as they lay together each night. They were symbols that changed meaning over time, at first laden with guilt and nightmares of one another screaming in pain. Reminders of failure, and terror, in the knowledge that they were too young, thrown too early into a war with an enemy like nothing their childhood tales prepared them for.

As they healed, treated with salves and sweet kisses, Lance and Keith found themselves trembling less and less when they saw those scars. The marks, born of cruelty and darkness, became more reminders of what they could survive when they were together.


	4. Home

They each had a very different vision of home.

To Lance, it was sunshine over the water, salt in the air, and sand in between your toes. It was laughter and smiles, cold afternoons in the rain and warm hugs after a day of play. It was cuddling up like puppies during a thunderstorm.

Keith didn’t envision any of that. “Home” in his mind was just another word for “place you live.” For a long time, he had no one to come back to. His home was dust and quiet and the howl of desert wind outside. Sometimes there’s a voice besides his own, deep and filled with weariness; _“I’ll be back soon.”_ But the memory is as old and faded as the rocking chair on the front porch.

Not that Keith had no concept at all of Lance’s version of home. He saw it, at least in some form, in the old movies he’d watch late at night to pass the time. Fathers sat at a polished kitchen table, reading the newspaper while mothers bustled about cleaning or cooking. Keith couldn’t really picture his father reading anything but cheap conspiracy magazines and he had no mother to place in any sort of kitchen, but that wasn’t the important part anyway. He just liked the part where the father would look up from his paper and ask, “How was your day, son?” Where the mother would turn with a sweet smile and say, “Welcome home, sweetie.”

He started saying “I’m home,” whenever he came back, despite the fact that no one was ever there to say anything in return.

He stopped thinking about home, up in space. The castle was home, now, and there wasn’t anything on Earth to go back to. It wasn’t the same for Lance. For Lance, there was only one place to call “home” in the entire universe. Sometimes, Keith longed for that, so much that he found himself gravitating toward Lance more and more, like he was a satellite trapped in the orbit of some beautiful, welcoming planet. It took him some time to realize that it wasn’t just Lance’s _home_ he was longing for.

When the war against Zarkon’s empire ended, Keith didn’t think twice about where he wanted to go. He went with Lance.

Lance’s family wasn’t quite like those old movies. There were children running everywhere. Lance’s father was more likely to be found on the porch with a book than at a table with a newspaper, and Lance’s mother never cooked or cleaned alone, always with Lance or some other family member at her side. There was always talking, and genuine laughter instead of plastic smiles.

Best of all was that Keith could walk in and say, “I’m home,” and have a dozen voices–plus one loving kiss–to welcome him home.


	5. Partners

They’re like Robin Hood and Little John, or so Lance always likes to say.

Keith says “Never call me Little John.” But he doesn’t disagree with the concept of it…they’re those kinds of bandits, after all; against the tyranny of the Kingdom of Galra and the way it takes advantage of the less fortunate. They roam about the countryside, robbing the rich and giving back to those most in need. They are, in essence, exactly what Lance says they are.

“Why am I the sidekick, though? Aren’t we partners?”

“Yeah, of course we are,” Lance replies with a scoff, as though the idea of them being anything less than equal is ridiculous. “It’s just that I’m the one with the arrows, so that makes me Robin Hood. Besides, you can’t tell me Robin Hood and Little John weren’t partners, too, in every sense of the word.”

Keith raises a brow. “Aren’t you forgetting about Maid Marian?”

“Robin Hood can be bi,” Lance insists. Keith thinks about it, then faces Lance again with a mock pout.

“Does this mean you’re going to leave me one day for some pretty princess and ride off into the sunset?”

Lance turns around, forgoing surveillance to face Keith with a mysterious expression. Keith isn’t sure what he’s thinking until he’s crossed the length of their hideout and planted a firm, heart-melting kiss on his partner. Keith can’t help the soft moan that slips out. He stares at Lance somewhat dazedly when they part.

“I’d _never_ leave you, no matter how pretty the princess.”

Keith smiles. “I didn’t think so.”


	6. Quote

“I’d recognize that mullet anywhere.”

Hunk doesn’t question him on it, but later, Lance reflects that he maybe felt a skeptical gaze on the back of his head as they all slid down the hill. He wonders what kind of look Hunk would give him if he brought it up now. For some reason, Hunk’s reactions still throw him for a loop, even years later.

In true Lance fashion, though, he thinks about it a lot. Analyzes himself and his reactions, to the point where he’s sure there’d be nothing left for Hunk to comment on, because Lance would already have done it himself. Ten times over. What does it say about him that he could recognize Keith by his unkempt country-boy mane, even miles away and in the dark? What does Hunk know about it that Lance doesn’t?

It could mean nothing, deep down; it could just mean that Lance is particularly observant, or that he has keen eyes. Which he is, and he does, but even then he’d have to know what to look for. He’d have to be seeking it, always, somewhere in the depths of his soul. 

And that…that means _something_. It means that he hasn’t forgotten Keith, even after all this time. It means he still thought about Keith, a lot, even after there was no longer a “rival” to glare at in the hallway.

He’s stewed over this for a grand total of one week when he gives up, mentally exhausted, and plops down next to his best friend with the heaviest of sighs. Hunk then proceeds to shake him down to his core.

“So. Keith, huh?”

And honestly, everything becomes clear as the cloudless blue sky.

Lance groans. “Yeah. _Keith_.”

After being thrown into an intergalactic war and becoming the pilot of a sentient mechanical lion, you’d think this wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen to Lance. Life’s funny sometimes.


	7. Free Day

Things had changed, while Shiro was drifting off in the astral plane, lost after the last battle with Zarkon. Everyone is different. More confident in themselves, and working together like they’d always done so. Keith had taken the leadership role Shiro had always known he was capable of, and even surpassed his expectations. He looked to everyone, used their strengths, listened when he could have lost himself to his own weaknesses.

He admits it wasn’t easy, getting to that point. He’d tried too hard at first, tried to be Shiro when he should have been coming into his own. He’d messed up quite a few times. Been called out for it. Had some heart-to-hearts. He–and the team–had come out stronger in the end.

“Lance has…Lance helped a lot,” he says, a mysterious smile on his face.

Lance is…well, it seems true that he’s mellowed out around Keith; in the time since Shiro’s return, Lance hasn’t picked one fight that wasn’t entirely playful, and their bickering hasn’t interfered with any of the missions. Shiro is quite caught off-guard by just _how_ different their relationship has become, however.

It’s after a mission that the last piece clicks into place. Lance cheers in triumph at a well-timed shot, singing his own praises, and Shiro smiles to know that some things never change. This goes especially when Lance says, “I think someone deserves a kiss for all his hard work when we get back, no?” Shiro is sure he’s going to have to pry an over-affectionate Lance off poor Allura when they return.

Then they do get back and he demands his kiss from Keith, who rolls his eyes and obliges, murmuring, “Nice work, sharpshooter.”

Shiro is curious, and one day, he wants to ask how it happened–but right now he sees first-love in their eyes and affection in every gesture; they’re in a world of their own, not to be disrupted. Shiro is content–perhaps for the first time in his life–and he can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my tumblr!
> 
> Main: http://saiikavon.tumblr.com/  
> Writing blog: http://saiikasnotebook.tumblr.com/


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